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Synchronicity Defined:
Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung first began using the term "synchronicity" in the 1920s to describe the experience of two or more causally unrelated events being observed as happening together in a manner that is meaningful. Just as events can be grouped by their cause, so also they can be grouped by their meaning. This relationship of meaning is sufficient in and of itself to constitute synchronicity, and it is not necessary to find some causal relationship between the events. As a matter of fact, finding a causal relationship between events can negate the experience of synchronicity; when this happens, the events are said to be "incoincident".
Youtube video explains synchronicity
Examples of Synchronicity
Dark Side of the Rainbow:
Fans of the rock group Pink Floyd have pointed out that their album DSotM (Dark Side of the Moon) can be used as an alternative soundtrack for the MGM motion picture The Wizard of Oz (1939), in a phenomenon generally referred to as DSotR (Dark Side of the Rainbow). Contrary to the suggestion by some that this sync was done intentionally, there is strong evidence to support the conclusion that Pink Floyd actually synchronized this album to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which would tend to discount the claim that it was deliberately synchronized to the Oz movie. (See Pink Floyd Synced DSOTM to 2001 -Not The Wizard of Oz) In an effort to find an alternative explanation, some have dismissed it as mere coincidence; others have tried to explain it as a trick of the mind, as in apophenia; but most interestingly, in 1997, writing for Relix magazine, Dave Kopel suggested the phenomenon was an example of Carl Jung's synchronicity. (see Dark Side of Oz: Coincidence, Apophenia or Synchronicity?) Since then, fans of DSotR have been citing the phenomenon as an example of synchronicity, perhaps without truly appreciating what synchronicity really means, or just how closely The Wizard of Oz resembles a parable on Jungian psychology.
While this phenomenon has been known about for many years, it has, for the most part, not been taken seriously, often dismissed as the imaginings of glue-sniffing acid trippers. Nevertheless, with a growing coincidences list for this match-up, and a more recent discovery that the album is synchronized to the movie not once, but twice, there is mounting evidence that there may really be something to this particular audio-visual pairing. Including 2001 as another possible sync, this double-sync with The Wizard of Oz movie makes it not only all the more unusual, but even less likely that Pink Floyd could have done this intentionally, given all the complications involved in simultaneously synchronizing an entire album to three different videos.
Watch DSotR on Youtube. As one commentator on this video observed, these concurrences "at most times are very general, off topic or out of context..." As Jung himself cautioned, we should avoid ascribing routine coincidences to synchronicity. Even an extraordinary coincidence may not necessarily indicate synchronicity at play. To decide whether or not something is synchronicity, we have to look at the significance of the coincidence in question. The Annotated List is my own attempt at an in depth analysis of these coincidences in DSotR, and to find some significance to all this that comes together in a coherent fashion.
From Personal Experience:
To cite an example of synchronicity from my own experience (using a true story), I recall an incident of waking up one morning to the sound of a thunderstorm. This storm was a ways off in the distance, and only the occasional rumble of thunder was audible from where I was situated. It was the same time that I had begun work on this website, and as I lay there in bed, I started going over in my mind ideas for the website. As I had written books in the past, finding sufficient words to fill my web pages up with was not a particularly daunting challenge. But as anyone with any experience creating web pages knows, people don't go online to read whole books. The challenge for the webmaster, in contrast to an author, is to say as much as possible with as few words as possible.
To continue the story, I was lying there thinking up ideas for my website, and one of the ideas I was contemplating that morning was the concept of synchronicity. I was looking for a phrase that would sufficiently give readers a sense of the meaning of the word, while at the same time satisfying this need for frugality with words. The phrase I had come up with was "meaningful coincidence" -a phrase that Jung himself had used to describe synchronicity. At the very moment the phrase "meaningful coincidence" entered my mind, a particularly loud clap of thunder disrupted my train of thought. I was not distacted to the point, however, where the significance of what had just happened was lost to me. Now if this had happened just the once, I likely would have forgotten it. But, seeing as a somewhat meaningful coincidence had just occured, at the very moment I was contemplating meaningful coincidences, I decided to test my meaningful coincidence to see if it was "just a coincidence". I waited until I thought the storm had passed, and then once again whispered the phrase "meaningful coincidence". At that very instant, another huge clap of thunder suddenly shattered the early morning silence of my room. At this point, I realized that as I lay contemplating synchronicity, I was in fact moving into the realm of synchronicity; but I had to be sure. I reasoned that if this were to happen three times, it would be outside the realm reasonable probability. So I waited again, until I thought the storm had passed. Once again, I whispered, "meaningful coincidence" and once again the house shook before I had even finished saying it.
Three times this had happened, and I was trying everything to convince myself that it wasn't happening. So this time I waited . . . and waited . . . until I hadn't heard even the faintest rumblings of thunder off in the distance for a good ten minutes. Then I tried blurting it out as quickly as I could: "Meaningful coincidence." No sooner had I opened my mouth when another enormous clap of thunder suddenly sounded, this time sounding as though it had come from directly overhead. By now, I was starting to get the message that I was not going to get away with writing a two word description for my definition of synchronicity. I later concluded that I needed to write a whole article on the subject.
The Titan
FACTS REGARDING OCEAN LINER THE TITAN:
- Largest vessel afloat in its day; said to be unsinkable
- less than half the lifeboats needed to accomodate capacity crew and passengers (about 3000 persons)
- This luxury liner was hailed as the engineering marvel of its day
- On an April night, struck iceberg on starboard side, while travelling in excess of 20 knots
- Sank 400 miles off coast of Newfoundland
- More than half of its 2500 passengers killed
The grim tale of The Titan doubtlessly is a familiar story to many of you, just as most are probably wondering if this is not a misprint, with the correct name of the vessel being The Titanic. The Titan is, in fact, the vessel's correct name, and these the correct facts of the story. But the tale of The Titan and its uncanny parallel to The Titanic would not seem so strange, considering that The Titan is a fictional ship, unless I tell you that this fictional ship appeared in a novel (Futility) by Morgan Robertson, in 1898, years before any plans for The Titanic had even been drawn up.
Another strange incident portending to The Titanic disaster is the story of spiritualist William Thomas Stead. Stead, a journalist, was a sharp critic of trans-oceanic liners crossing the Atlantic with insufficient lifeboats. Years after publishing an article on the subject, Stead was a passenger on The Titanic, and was one of the passengers lost at sea.
Examples of Synchronicity on Youtube
Dr. David Luke gets "tired"
Meaningful Coincidence or "Just Coincidence"?
After doing more research on the subject, after my own incident with synchronicity, it quickly became obvious that "meaningful coincidence" was not a sufficient phrase to sum up the concept of synchronicity, as Carl Jung had explained it. The term "meaningful coincidence" does not truly convey the significance of the phenomenon that Jung had ascribed to it. If I am sitting in an office and drop my pen, and the person next to me drops her pen at the same moment -that is just a mundane example of coincidence, which most of us experience every day. True synchronicity, according to Jung, is a much rarer event -an event which offers the suggestion of a governing dynamic operating to guide the course of human affairs.
Unus Mundus
Synchronicity was not a concept central to Jung's theories; rather, it was a concept put forth by Jung to show evidence for his theories on psychology. Jung was among the early pioneers of psychology whose methods were aimed at being scientific, but, at the same time, their theories were built around concepts of spirituality. Jung saw life as an expression of a deeper order, which he and Wolfgang Pauli called Unus mundus (Latin: One world).
For Jung, synchronicity, much like dreams, was relevant to psychology to the extent that it could offer a person an awakening from an egocentric perspective to an awareness of the Unus Mundus. Synchronicity, according to Jung, offered us evidence of his other concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious.
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